How to Learn Personal Finance: 9 Ways

There has been an explosion in the number of people wanting to know how to learn personal finance. Unfortunately, this topic isn’t something that school teaches. Instead, they teach us how to dissect a frog, for some reason. Financial literacy matters more so now than ever before.

With inflation running at multi-decades high, it matters more so than ever to know how personal finance works. The bull market of 2020 – 2021 spoiled everyone rotten and led everyone to think that the good times last forever without giving it a minute’s thought.

That’s just not true. The good times last forever, until they don’t. Then the bear market of 2022 burned many “investors” and people so much that they lost their shirts. There certainly is the right way to learn personal finance.

You don’t want to learn how to be a millionaire from someone who’s not even a millionaire themselves, let alone on their way to get there. When I first started learning about personal finance, I wish I had this know-how guide with me to save me years of reading and listening to the wrong things.

From knowing how to learn personal finance, I amassed a net worth of $400k+ and I don’t ever plan on stopping growing that net worth. I’m barely in my 20s. I can only imagine how much larger that number will grow to in the years to come.

Personal finance is a boring but crucial subject to learn.

How to Learn Personal Finance

So with that said, below are the nine ways on knowing how to learn personal finance. They will save you years of searching for the wrong information.

1) Read About Personal Finance a Lot

I first started learning about personal finance when I was a Sophomore in college. I saw a personal finance website put out an ad about their blog and website then I clicked on it. What happened next was I got immersed and exposed to many people actually talking about money.

My naive 20 year old self thought that talking about money was evil! How come there are internet strangers talking about it for free? What’s the catch?! The catch was that there was no catch. Some information is better than others but reading personal finance blogs and books was how I started.

I kept on reading about personal finance for a solid 4 years straight. How to learn personal finance starts with reading because financial literacy starts with reading comprehension. There are many wonderful money blogs out there giving the correct money advice… for free!

It’s the most mind boggling thing ever. They really helped me out and I owe a mountain of gratitude to the personal finance community.

2) Watch YouTube Videos on Personal Finance

Then the level 2 of knowing how to learn personal finance goes into watching YouTube videos. Sometimes, you just don’t want to read long text and would rather have someone telling you these things in the background. That’s where YouTube comes in.

The edge YouTube has over text is that you can have it running in the background. However, the downside is that you can’t scroll to the section that you really want to learn more about or is more relevant to you. There’s positives and negatives to both.

However, both are still good avenues to learn about money. There are fantastic YouTube channels out there teaching you personal finance and money for free. And this advice is from actual multimillionaires on how to be a multimillionaire yourself!

That’s a powerful platform. There’s never been more access to accurate information in the history of the world until today.

3) Be Passionate About Money

You can’t know how to learn about personal finance if you’re not passionate about money in the first place. Coming from a frugal family where my Mom taught me the importance of stretching a dollar, money lit a light in my brain. It was something that I liked learning more about.

When you want to learn about personal finance, you actually take the steps to learn about personal finance. It lit my brain when I hear of investing strategies that are out there. Or when I hear of how to buy the same thing but just at a cheaper price.

Or how to work credit cards to your advantage. There’s many tips and tricks that comes to learning about personal finance. Personal finance is pretty simple but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t nuances to every situation that you can encounter.

The complexities are what makes learning about personal finance interesting.

4) You Have to Want to Learn Personal Finance

It first starts with your desire. When your parents told you to eat broccoli because “it’s good for you”, that didn’t convince you to keep eating broccoli. That convinced you to eat it that one time and never regularly eat it again if you were given free choice.

You have to convince yourself that it’s a good thing. That learning and talking about money is actually a good thing and something that you actually want to do. For me, personally, I have a dying need to be rich. I want to be rich because I want to know exactly just how far I can go.

Therefore, I was willing to do everything I can in order to learn. Put in the hours on the weekends, skip eating out if I have to, and do couponing if I have to. There were many sacrifices I made along the way and I would make the exact same sacrifices in a second if given the chance.

Personal finance is such a huge passion of mine that I have a blog all about it. Once you want to learn about money, it becomes that much easier to do so.

5) Put the Knowledge into Action

Knowledge meaning nothing if there’s no follow through or action behind the knowledge. There’s no point in knowing which investments to pursue if you never actively talk to a lender if you choose the real estate investing route. Or if you never open up a brokerage account if you choose the stock route.

Whatever the case is, knowledge is meaningless if you don’t take action and execute. Knowing how to learn personal finance means being willing to fail at some things and succeed at other things. There are many mistakes that I made during my journey.

There was that time when I lost money gambling or the time I lost money day trading. I made every mistake in the book and I know I’ll make even more mistakes. However, as long as my successes outweigh my mistakes, I’ll be just fine.

How to learn personal finance starts with knowing how to put in the action and follow through.

6) Create a Budget and Follow It

One of the easiest ways to actually put the action in motion is to create a budget. My budget is very simple, I spend approximately $2,000 per month or $25,000 per year. It’s nowhere near as complex as others’ budgets because I’m a single guy for now.

However, once I have a family, my expenses will be much more complex and I’ll need a more detailed budget. My simple budget will do for now. My current budget mostly consist of the essential expenses. How to learn personal finance starts with having a budget.

Having a budget is something that everyone who is good with money is subject to. There are people who say they don’t have a budget. Most of those people already made their millions and have no need for a budget anymore. For the rest of us who are just starting out, budgets are a necessity.

They helped more people build wealth than any other tool.

7) Talk About it in Real Life

Too many people are too ashamed talking about money. They feel ashamed telling others how much their vacations cost. When there is information asymmetry, then the person who wins is the person in power or the one selling you something.

Insurance companies love it when you don’t talk about your insurance rates. How else are you going to know if you’re over or underpaying for your insurance if you don’t talk about it with others? You’re just not going to know.

Knowing how to learn personal finance starts with talking about money with your trusted ones.

There are people who judge you for divulging that information. Those are the people you either need to ignore or cut out of your life. It’s just money. There’s no shame in talking openly about it. That lack of information out in the world is the reason why so many oppressed people continue to be oppressed.

We can slowly change that so power is more balanced.

8) Open Brokerage Accounts

This is a part of the taking action part. If your asset class of choice to invest in is stocks, then it’s time to open a brokerage account. You can’t buy stocks if you don’t have a brokerage account. After you learn about investing and knowing what sound asset classes are, it’s time to follow through.

There’s no need to take on speculative investments like NFTs. NFT sales are down 90% since the peak. Just like that. Poof. Logan Paul lost millions and millions of dollars “investing” his money in NFTs. That’s just not good.

A brokerage account that lets you invest in index funds and/or sound companies is a good thing. Although equities are volatile, my brokerage account lets me sleep soundly at night. I’m used to the volatility by now. I know that the investment I make today will pay off dividends in the future.

My brokerage account is the reason why I’m building wealth. It’s a part of knowing how to learn personal finance. By actually putting theory into practice.

9) Take Breaks Once in a While from Personal Finance

You can’t be a hardcore 24/7 personal finance geek and expect to stick with it 24/7. The key is long term consistency. There are many people who flat out quit the financial independence path because they don’t want to give up eating out. You don’t have to give up eating out altogether.

If you want to eat out, then it’s time to earn more money. Whether through side hustles, getting a raise, or changing jobs, there are unlimited opportunities to earn more money. In other case, it’s crucial to take breaks once in a while and celebrate your milestones so you don’t burn out.

When I first reached a $100k net worth, I celebrated by taking myself out to a nice $100 steak dinner. It was so worth it and I would do it again in a second. Breaks are essential in personal finance because they give you the fuel to keep on going.

Part of knowing how to learn personal finance involves walking away from it every once a while. Otherwise you get sick and tired of it. You don’t want to give up just before a major breakthrough.

Knowing How to Learn Personal Finance is Key to Wealth

Wealth isn’t built by sitting around and hoping things are handed to you. Wealth is built by actively taking action and making choices today that pays dividends in the future. The first step is knowing how to learn personal finance. After you dip your toes, then you become more comfortable.

Then you delve even further and further until you explore the entire pool. Knowing how to learn personal finance changed my life for the better. I wouldn’t trade my choices for anything in the world. There were extreme sacrifices I made. I lived in a cheap part of town for 5 years.

I saved 50%+ of my income and deprived myself of joy for 5+ years. It got me to where I am today and it is setting myself up for future success I never thought was possible. There are people who are bad at saving money yet downright refuse to admit it.

They refuse to know how to learn personal finance because they think they have it all figured out. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Throughout the journey, you will find out a lot of things about yourself that you need to find out. The patient ones always win out by the end.

I’ve been poor and I’ve been rich and trust me when I say rich is better than being poor. When you’re poor, you have no choice but to be at the mercy of someone else. You don’t want to be in that position. The power to walk away is one of the most powerful tools you can ever possibly have.

Knowing how to learn personal finance is key.

How to Learn Personal Finance 9 Ways Shortlist:

• Read about personal finance a lot
• Watch YouTube videos on personal finance
• Be passionate about money
• You have to want to learn personal finance
• Put the knowledge into action
• Create a budget and follow it
• Talk about it in real life
• Open brokerage accounts
• Take breaks once in a while from personal finance